Integrity After Death

Sounds morbid, huh? No, I'm not dying. Well, we're all dying eventually I suppose, but no plans anytime soon on my end. :) So I've always had this "thing" about organ donation, as in "I think it's a really great idea, but not for me." I'm sure it has a great deal to do with having typed an autopsy report once in my job - just a little bit too much information about what they do to bodies, that I didn't want them doing anything to mine, thank you very much. So while my husband has always been a proud organ donor on his license, I always say no. And, frankly, always felt guilty about saying no. I've seen my share of ER episodes where the person is saved from the brink of death by a generous organ donor, but I still couldn't do it. Part of it, admittedly, was also my thought that my body is somehow "damaged goods" - sure, I've got lots of health issues, including some autoimmune stuff, and there are probably body parts nobody (medically) would want for transplantation. I guess it was just one more way to justify why I was saying no. Then there was the Monty Python skit on Live Organ Transplants from their Meaning of Life movie where they come to collect an organ from a still-living person - funny in that morbid, tasteless way that only Monty Python can do, but still kinda disturbing, even if you know they won't really do that in real life. So in my Soul Coaching work I'm reading a lot about syncronicity and how there are messages all around us, if only we'd listen. You know, the conversation that you overhear on line at the supermarket that speaks to you, even though they weren't talking to you. Or the song you hear on the radio that speaks to you. And the funny thing is that 3 other times in the past month (before reading about this in Soul Coaching) I had read stuff about these types of messages and syncronicity. So it was like the Universe trying to beat me over the head with making me listen to messages I'm ignoring. In the past few weeks I was watching yet another TV show about someone saved from imminent death by a transplant. Then I went to Green Festival and had a lengthy conversation with a woman on Green Burial, which was rather fascinating. I found the card on Saturday while cleaning and started reading their website which made me think about the integrity of not harming the earth with chemicals now, so why do it when you're dead? And somehow that led me to some gruesome (but fascinating) reading about Sky Burials in Tibet (short, no-gruesome-details version is basically that instead of burial your body is prepared as vulture food, partly so that your death can help sustain life). Then about 2 weeks ago I was waiting for a bus and another one goes by that has a sign on it advertising Donate Life Today, an organization where you can register to donate organs. That's an odd kind of bus advert, don't you think? So then I see a commercial for it the same week (or a blurb on the news, I forget which). And the other day I was walking downtown and saw another bus with the same damned ad on it. So it was like the Universe was screaming "I'm talking to YOU! LISTEN!" I started meditating on it, in the process of my Soul Coaching workbook, and realizing that I keep talking about living a life of integrity. I want to be a healer in this lifetime. So if I want to heal people now, why not also want to heal people after I'm gone? And as for the part about judging whether my organs are worthy, yesterday's Soul Coaching affirmation of the day was "Who I am is enough." I realized that I'm just perpetuating the notion that I am somehow less-than. Let somebody else be the judge after I'm gone. So I made peace with my demons, decided that I will die with the same integrity that I want to live with, and I signed up at the Donate Life Today site to be an organ/tissue donor. Interestingly, a decision that freaked me out for many years was really a non-event in the end, and one that I feel good about. And made me a learn a lot about myself in the process.